On July 10, a church signed the deeds transferring a half-acre of land hosting a community center in the heart of San Gabriel — less than a mile down the road from the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel — to an Indigenous tribe’s nonprofit.
On paper, it was a relatively ordinary transaction (except maybe for the $0 price tag); however, for the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians based in Los Angeles and Orange counties, it was anything but: For the first time in centuries, a piece of their ancestral territory belongs to them.
“There were books when my daughters were in grammar school and high school that stated we were extinct,” said Art Morales, an elder and historian in the tribe. To Morales, persevering through that long, painful history is what makes the agreement so significant: The tribe is “basically on the map now.”
The lot, previously owned by the Presbytery of San Gabriel — a unit of the Presbyterian Church (USA), one of the largest Presbyterian denominations in the nation — hosts offices, a kitchen and a community space, as well as an outdoor patio and green space.
Now, under the ownership of the tribe, led by the Gabrieleno Tongva Tribal Council, the space will host cultural ceremonies, government meetings, programming for tribal youths and a community food bank.
Unlike tribes with federal recognition, the hundreds without it have no direct legal means to negotiate with the U.S. government for reservations. Instead, they often set up nonprofit organizations to acquire land through agreements with private organizations or states.
In California, many tribes have found it difficult to secure federal recognition. They had to survive through three different occupying governments: Spain, Mexico and the U.S.
The U.S. government negotiated numerous agreements with California tribes that it has repeatedly failed to uphold — often because the state got in the way. Additionally, in the late 19th century, a federal effort to send surveyors throughout the state to create reservations for California mission tribes began in San Diego but lost steam by the time it reached Los Angeles.
The result is that even to this day, tribes without land — including the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians until last month — have had to find a venue (often local parks) and get all the proper permissions and permits any time they wanted to hold a public gathering.
“Everything is very labor-intensive on our part just so that we can actually engage in our culture,” said Kimberly Johnson, secretary for the tribe. “This breaks that barrier, and folks know they can go at any time and be together. I think, right now, people need each other more than anything.”
Long before the lot was a community center, it sat in Siban’gna.
Siban’gna was a village of the First Peoples in the region. Nestled along the river, it was home to a few hundred individuals. Dome-shaped homes covered in tule, called ki, dotted the landscape.
In 1771, Spanish priests tasked with establishing church footholds in the region decided to build what would become the San Gabriel Mission near the village. “When the padres came through … they used the words ‘a land of abundance.’ They use words like ‘water flowing’ and ‘food’ and ‘happiness,’” Johnson said.
To execute the mission project, they exerted control of the Native communities and forced Indigenous people — many of whose descendants now refer to themselves as Gabrieleno, a term derived from the mission — into labor to construct and maintain the mission.
After the United States took over in the 19th century, it began using a different method of control: Redlining maps made it impossible for residents in low-rated areas to obtain mortgages and discouraged businesses from investing in the areas where Indigenous people lived.
Indeed, the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians’ newly recovered land received the lowest possible rating at the time. In the assessment, the neighborhood was described as “a menace to this whole section,” noting “pressure is being exerted to confine the population and keep it from infiltrating into other districts.”
Now, more than 250 years after the Spanish first settled in current-day Los Angeles, the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians — one of several Gabrieleno tribes acknowledged by the state — has finally gained a toehold back.
“To be able to connect to a land that our ancestors walked is very powerful,” Johnson said. “The land that we lived on — and had a village on — that we worked on, we were then told, ‘It’s illegal for you to own that land.’ So to see it come full circle back to us again, it’s very healing.”
When the Presbytery of San Gabriel began exploring options for the former community center site, Mona Recalde, who runs community outreach for the tribe and is deeply involved with the church, asked whether it would consider a land return.
“When Mona asked … for just about everybody in the Presbyterian, it was an instantaneous recognition of how much sense this made,” said Wendy Tajima, executive presbyter, or spiritual leader, of the church.
For Tajima, it seemed like a way to make good on the promise of land acknowledgment — the church, instead of just paying lip service regarding previous land grabs, could actually ameliorate some of the harm Christian institutions such as the mission caused in the past.
The tribe hopes other religious institutions (including the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel just down the street) will follow the presbytery’s lead.
The church and the tribe held a ceremony commemorating the agreement at the tribe’s new Gabrieleno Tongva Tribal Center at Siban’gna on Aug. 2.
As Presbyterian ceremonies gave way to the Gabrielenos’, an emotional Tajima couldn’t help but feel the tribe’s deep-rooted connection to the land rekindling in real time.
When the tribe “started to burn the sage … that’s when it hit me,” she said. “This was a public witness of the first time that they could practice their traditions. They could be who they are and not have to ask anybody else.”
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